Pretty cool card. A 2/3 body for 3 isn't great, but in corner cases a Crucible that attacks is pretty good. I'd say that this is easier to remove, but these days there is the same, if not more, artifact removal instead of creature removal. Being a Naga Cleric doesn't help Cavern decks, so I hesitate to see a good fit right away. Noble Fish probably just would prefer jamming True-Name at the 3 drop spot instead of this.

Pretty cool card. A 2/3 body for 3 isn't great, but in corner cases a Crucible that attacks is pretty good. I'd say that this is easier to remove, but these days there is the same, if not more, artifact removal instead of creature removal. Being a Naga Cleric doesn't help Cavern decks, so I hesitate to see a good fit right away. Noble Fish probably just would prefer jamming True-Name at the 3 drop spot instead of this.

Can we think of any time a Vintage-playable effect got legs and was worse? Seems to me every time they do this the effect gets better.

Dark Confidant
Magus of the Moon
Edilion of the Great Revel
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
etc etc

Can we think of any time a Vintage-playable effect got legs and was worse? Seems to me every time they do this the effect gets better.

Magus of the Jar? Magus of the Bazaar? Magus of the Moat? Magus of the Abyss? Magus of the Library? Magus of the Tabernacle? Magus of the Wheel? Magus of the Will?

I mean... yeah, but... some of those did not JUST grow legs, they also got material drawbacks. Abyss kills itself. Wheel and Tabernacle and Bazaar and Will all cost more.

The best counterexamples are probably Jar and Moat. With Jar, I guess the analogy is whether Tinker/Shops are so critical to Crucible that it's not good without them in the same way that Memory Jar owes much of its existence to those cards. I'm not sure that one is fair either.

But Magus of the Moat is pretty spot-on as a counterexample, I admit. (I also love Magus of the Moat!)

Can we think of any time a Vintage-playable effect got legs and was worse? Seems to me every time they do this the effect gets better.

Dark Confidant
Magus of the Moon
Edilion of the Great Revel
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
etc etc

For what it's worth, many times these creatures are played alongside the existing card rather than replacing them. EG, Thalia 1 and Thorn, Eidelon and Pillar. (And not to go too far off but it my few games with it, I've preferred Pillar due to all the creature removal that's been around recently)

Can we think of any time a Vintage-playable effect got legs and was worse? Seems to me every time they do this the effect gets better.

Magus of the Jar? Magus of the Bazaar? Magus of the Moat? Magus of the Abyss? Magus of the Library? Magus of the Tabernacle? Magus of the Wheel? Magus of the Will?

I mean... yeah, but... some of those did not JUST grow legs, they also got material drawbacks. Abyss kills itself. Wheel and Tabernacle and Bazaar and Will all cost more.

The best counterexamples are probably Jar and Moat. With Jar, I guess the analogy is whether Tinker/Shops are so critical to Crucible that it's not good without them in the same way that Memory Jar owes much of its existence to those cards. I'm not sure that one is fair either.

But Magus of the Moat is pretty spot-on as a counterexample, I admit. (I also love Magus of the Moat!)

@The-Atog-Lord Magus of the Moat definitely has some advantages over Moat – and I really like it in Brian's list – but not enough that you see more Moats than Maguses in general. For the purposes of this thread, I think it's true that "adding legs doesn't ALWAYS make an effect better."

I think the differences are largely explored in vintage. Attacking and blocking is awesome, but it's easier to kill creatures than it is to kill artifacts (usually, depends on the matchup). Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon is often a tossup, I think.

As for this card, I think you would still rather have Crucible in a matchup like Landstill, where you really want Crucible to stick around, and they have lots of creature removal ... but the marginal advantage of a body against decks where Crucible isn't as key (e.g. Mentor), means that the card is more maindeckable than Crucible is. Tutorability by Green Sun's Zenith or other cards is another dynamic that isn't true about Magus of the Moon/Moat, so that's pretty interesting, too

Rallier gets back one land or something else good so I think they're at least in similar slots.

Rallier also puts the land right into play which acts as ramp and/or lets you immediately Strip something the turn you play it, even if you already played a land. That said, I wouldn't play Rallier if I was ONLY planning on returning lands with it (I'd want to build around it a little more). Still, I'm not interested in Rallier enough to bother testing it, but I'm definitely interested in seeing this card in action. I think that while they could both be run in the same deck, that sort of deck doesn't feel strong to me right now, and some lists that could use Excavator but not Rallier feel like they have a lot more potential to me

It is not uncommon to run two different creature types in a Cavern of Souls deck. I would want to try it in a Human-Cleric build. I think it looks strong enough to justify to test in a build a build like that with 4x Wasteland, 1x Strip Mine and then 2-4x Qhost Quarter, but only testing will tell if it is strong enough of course.

Many of the White Wheenie decks I have been playing you would name Cleric anyway if you had a Leonin Relic-Warder on hand along with various humans that were also Clerics in addition to Humans.

The list of Clerics that have seen regular play is decent, and most are humans (and all white if you want to go White-Green):

Containment Priest

Leonin Relic-Warder

Sanctum Prelate

Leonin Arbiter

True Beliver

Fiend Hunter

And even more see fringe play, also with a lot of humans among them (also White):

It's "easier" to remove than Crucible, but being a creature has some advantages too I suppose? Green Sun's Zenith seems interesting and it plays nice with Thorn effects. This is far from my type of card (:D) but I'm sure it's at least fringe-playable.

I sent a friend a Cleric Tribal deck a few weeks ago after realizing that Daru Spiritualist can't die to Walking Ballista activations. It ran Vizier of the Menagerie at the top end, as well as the infinite life combo of Daru Spiritualist, Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim and Shaman en-Kor (all Clerics). Here's a rough maindeck based on what I had:

There are very obvious problems with the deck, such as how little it chooses to disrupt the opponent. The original list had Starlit Sanctum in place of Wasteland, but a swap was made in order to include Ramunap Excavator. In the end, playing up the Ghost Quarter/Leonin Arbiter package that is used in Modern with Ramunap Excavator (and fewer colors) may be a much better starting point. However, very few decks in Vintage can deal with infinite life, so every Cleric that comes along is something I always take a second look at.